11-22 Steps To Success; Part 2 ~ Billy Caputo

11-22 Steps To Success; Part 2 ~ Billy Caputo

11) Build On Strength

People leave school without knowing the things they excel at nor in which industry they can thrive. This skipping from job to job disables them to really develop deep domain expertise which is a requisite for making it big.

A person can only perform from strengths, and cannot build performance on weakness.

Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values.

It takes far less energy to move from first-rate performance to excellence than it does to move from incompetence to mediocrity.

Application & Thoughts

Read Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker or Download The Summary. Find answers to the underlying questions, they are indicators of strengths.

In what did you grow up around?
What do strangers compliment you on?
What did you want to become as a child (what were the underlying trends?)
What have you been doing the last 10 years?
What can you effortlessly talk about without losing drive?
What are the things you effortlessly excel at? What comes easy for you?
What are the things that make you feel energetic when you do them?
In what areas do you learning quickly?
Who do you envy? Who are your mentors?
Build up an array of intangible and tangible skills that are highly desired and difficult to learn suited to your strengths.

If you’re more of an introvert and dislike unstructured/chaotic environments, don’t place yourself in those. If you find you thrive in stimulating environments or need to work with people, go for that.

12) Find Something You Like – Not “Passion”

Look for work you can sustain for a long time. Your work is going to fill a large part of your adult life therefore it’s imperative you put yourself in a position you can excel at (by knowing your strengths). If you have a job where you need vacation from, you should never go back to it.

You shouldn’t look for your passion either, looking for that illusive pot of gold that “feels just right”. It will send you on a wild-goose chase blocking you from building up deep domain expertise in one area.

Find something you like instead.

“Never do something you love, once you do it for work you won’t love it anymore. Do what you like” – Allan Nation
It’s ok to have an eb and flow of work and play but your end-game shouldn’t be vacation. It should be – as he calls it – “tapdancing” out of bed. Meaning you’re excited and motivated to start your day and feel competent at what you’re doing.

Application & Thoughts

Don’t look for passion but build on strength. We’re often told to “follow our passion” but that’s rarely adequate. Position yourself in areas you like and are good at and after a while you’ll learn to love it.

Find work you have an natural advantage in and use that to your own benefit. It’ll become your passion after a while.

13) Be Prepared

Our life is the combined result of our knowledge and our ignorance. We achieve what we understand deeply but lose that what we’re ignorant about.

Ask yourself how many “tools” you have in your tool-belt to deal with your problems. Are you well-rounded enough?

If you don’t have it in your head, you’ll have it in your heel.(meaning ignorance is costly)

Application & Thoughts

Ask yourself the worst case scenarios that can happen in each area of your life; what is necessary to prepare yourself for the future? Do you know;

It’s not enough to merely make money, it has to be maintained and grown into larger quantities. Adopt the “investor mentality” and start spending money on things that bring you a return in profit over time.

Most people buy things that rust, rot or depreciate as Tai says; New furniture, latest technological gadgets, fancy cars they can’t afford and so-on. These are consumption’s – not investments.

See you dollars as little seeds you plant to generate and grow a better future.

Many people are frivolous in spending. Not only money but also time, energy and health. He recommends calculating the real cost involved of something instead of just taking into account the price.

How many hours do you have to work to pay for this item?
How much of your health are you sacrificing by eating “cheap” food?
How much energy will this purchase cost you?
Application & Thoughts

Information is your most valuable asset.

Invest in books, seminars & mentors. A Mentor can be someone that Inspires you. M Chiropractor and friend Christian and friend Denise, who runs a law firm are very influential on me. I also love to read on anything to do with Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Carl Iccan, Donald Trump and more.
Invest in good food for a clear mind (I recommend paleo/ketogenic type diet)
Study investing before trusting-off your money to others!
Spend money on events over material possessions to create what Daniel Kahnemann calls ‘memory happiness”
Sell all the stuff you don’t use.

15) Be A “Social Chameleon”

There are different types of people with different sets of personalities. Tai Lopez recommends becoming a “social chameleon” and shifting to a communication style suited to the person you’re talking to.

He has developed his own “personality system” to categorize 4 different people. (A bit like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.) He calls it the P.A.S.E.-system: Practical, Action, Social & Emotional. Representing 4 “styles” people embody.

Practical people are slower. They like to plan their work and need a lot of structure. They are unmalleable.
Action-takers burn through stuff. They’re more hands-on kind of types. They start a lot of stuff but don’t really finish it.
Social people are more go-with-the-flow kind of people. They are more gregarious and people oriented. They can be flaky at times.
Emotional people are comparable to deep oceans. They’re sensitive and intuitive.
Application & Thoughts

I don’t like his system but I like the purpose it serves. I’m convinced some personalty traits are inborn and it’s important to “speak other peoples’ language” and adapt to their way of thinking. Being a social chameleon like Tai says.

I personally like the MBTI test for categorizing people.

Talk quieter and more deeply with introverts
Be more sensitive/caring around emotional people and more rational/to-the-point around logical ones.
Read How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie (GREAT book)

16) Be A Truthseeker

Life is never black or white. It’s not enough to see through your own eyes but you should see the world through “truths eyes”.

What does this mean?

Never become adamant in any set of beliefs before heavy experimentation.

Don’t be blinded by others. Much “common knowledge” is simply a reflection of social bias. Document YOUR reality by reading the “obvious signs”.

Health: Take of your shirt and look at your body in the mirror. Is it healthy? Do you exercise? Do you eat right?
Wealth: Open up your bank account next or check your financial template. Is your balance going down? Do you know you strengths? Are you taking initiative?
Social: Lastly, check the relationships on your phone. Do you want more friends and/or more meaning in your relationships (breadth/depth?)
The closer we get to the truth the better we’ll do in each area.

Be a constant experimenter on yourself and track progress on the things you’re doing. Here’s the process one should go through to adopt the experimenter mentality;

Ask a research question
Research & Form a hypothesis (Ask opinions of experts)
Test it (1-3 months) – stick to it
Observe & record the process and the result
Make a conclusion
Implement/Discard
Application & Thoughts

17) Define Your End-Game

Envision your funeral and ask yourself what you would want other to say about you and your life. What will you have left behind? How will others remember you?

In your mind’s eye, see yourself going to the funeral of a loved one. Picture yourself driving to the funeral parlor or chapel, parking the car, and getting out. As you walk inside the building, you notice the flowers, the soft organ music. You see the faces of friends and family you pass along the way. You feel the shared sorrow of losing, the joy of having known, that radiates from the hearts of the people there.

As you walk down to the front of the room and look inside the casket, you suddenly come face to face with yourself. This is your funeral, three years from today. All these people have come to honor you, to express feelings of love and appreciation for your life.

As you take a seat and wait for the services to begin, you look at the program in your hand. There are to be four speakers. The first is from your family, immediate and also extended —children, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents who have come from all over the country to attend. The second speaker is one of your friends, someone who can give a sense of what you were as a person. The third speaker is from your work or profession. And the fourth is from your church or some community organization where you’ve been involved in service.

Now think deeply. What would you like each of these speakers to say about you and your life? What kind of husband, wife, father, or mother would like their words to reflect? What kind of son or daughter or cousin? What kind of friend? What kind of working associate?

What character would you like them to have seen in you? What contributions, what achievements would you want them to remember? Look carefully at the people around you. What difference would you like to have made in their lives? – 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
Look at your role models and the life they’ve build for themselves and ask whether you want to be In their shoes. Most people drift aimlessly because they’ve never really analyzed the results they’re looking for.

Without this it’s far too easy to become trapped in the plans of someone else.

Application & Thoughts

Define for each area of your life what you exactly want. I personally use the 7 areas of life approach to solve this problem but the visualization does help to figure out what you truly value.

The world is a competitive place where not everyone has you best interest at heart. The only person who does is yourself (and maybe some of your family). We’re selfish animals by instinct, programmed for survival. Not everyone adheres to the same moral laws you abide by.

Don’t be a sucker by not understanding human nature.

Irresistible forces are always at work. So don’t be fooled by outward appearances, people aren’t always what they project to be.

Morality is the cognitive victory on our animalistic nature. An unwritten code for effective living that can inspire trust and security. Yet it doesn’t always win on our instinctual war for scarce resources.

“Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills” the animal nature of man is a product of genetic evolution; the urges of man are therefore basal at best. Money, reproduction, happiness, sex, … .

Overall: be careful who you trust, especially when it comes to money.

Application & Thoughts

Set high criteria for the people you allow in your life. Stay away from the unfortunate, unlucky, emotional unstable or otherwise untrustable.

Interview & judge people through recommendations and background checking. It takes a while to completely trust someone, so let people be around you for a long time to see “all their sides”

19) Spend Time Wisely

Life is long if you know how to use it, most people waste their time on useless trivia. We’re not given a short life, but we’re wasteful of it.

Seneca describes 8 ways in which people waste their life;

Greedy activities
Dedication to useless tasks
Drinking & drugs
Laziness
Worrying what others think of you
Self-imposed servitude to thankless people
Pursuing others people money (making others rich)
Having no clear direction
Here’s another cool quote I’ve compiled from several different sources;

Poor is the man never able to unshackle the chains of his instinctual conditioning.
Predestined for waste, indulgence and decay is he who’s incapable to recollect yesterdays events, utilize today and anticipate the wonders of tomorrow.
Blind of time we waste much of it.
Merely existing, not living.
Don’t be without true pleasure or improvements of the mind – to avoid weeping over the days that will never come again.
Application & Thoughts

I think it’s best to divide your time between 80% stoicism and 20% epicureanism. I call it the 80/20 YOLO-Rule.

20) Prioritize

Not everything is equally important. In your effort to juggle around all things everything gets shortsighted.

There are six BIG lies when it comes to productivity (One Thing by Gary Keller)

All things matter equally. Not everything is equally as important. There’s really only one thing that truly matters.
Multitasking is good & efficient. Multitasking is a myth it’s simply switching back and forth between different tasks rapidly. Don’t let you workflow be interrupted by distractions (re-engaging in a project consumes considerably more time and energy)
Discipline in everything is necessary. You have to be selectively discipline. Success is about doing the right things right, not everything right. Become selectively disciplined until habits are formed.

Willpower is always on will-call. Willpower is like a battery, it depletes over time. This concept is called willpower depletion. Think of it like the power bar on your cell-phone, it drains over time. Do your most important work first.
Balance is important. To achieve an extraordinary result, you must choose what matters most and give it all the time it demands. This requires getting extremely out of balance related to other life areas.

Big is bad. How big you think becomes the launching pad for how high you achieve. Our results are directly related to the magnitude of our thinking. Think big. Now double it.
Application & Thoughts

Do your most important activities first
Plan your “3-4 big rocks” the day before
Don’t multitask
Make habits
Read “The One Thing” by Gary Keller